Old Friends: New Babies

I got together with an old friend today, primarily so we could admire one another's babies (but also so she could hand down some toys- woo hoo!).  There was a time (in Jr. High, to be specific) that she, my Katie, and I were inseparable.  And now all of us have the world's most beautiful children.  Apparently lots of Elfquest and elaborate story-telling in your youth leads to better looking children in your thirties.  Who knew?  (Get on that, Science.)

Mom made our ancestral food (schnitzel) for dinner, and Neeps loved it.  Obviously.  And after he was in bed the three of us (Mom, Nathan, and I) went out to watch the shooting stars extravaganza.

It was not what I'd call even a qualified success, since Mom was the champion Star Spotter with a grand total of two.  Stupid cloud cover.

Oh well, there's always next year!

Visiting Ghost Opa and Other Bonding Experiences

Today I did something that is, no getting around it, pretty damn weird.

I took my kid to a cemetery to take smiling photos with him on my father's grave (and also over my grandparents' graves).

Yeah yeah yeah, understandable, whatever- still weird.  Get use to it, kid: yours will be a lifetime of this sort of weirdness.

Anyway, after that we came back to my mom's house and did the A#1 thing I had planned to do while we were in Alabama in freaking August:

SWIMMING!

 Yaaaaay!  Now granted it started raining literally the moment we got in the pool, so we were not exactly having the sun-soaked experience I'd envisioned, but whatever we were swimming.  I even put my new suit to the test by doing a few dives: it held up.

After Neeps was put to bed, Nathan and I hit the town- specifically a nice little pub downtown.  We spent much of our date marveling over the fact that we were able to be on it in Prattville: this little town has changed a lot since we were teenagers.

We shut the place down (not hard to do on a weeknight) and then went for a walk on the waterfront.  Eventually we sat on a bench and creek/moon/pokemon-hunter watched for a while.  All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening in a (no-longer-)small southern town.

Melting, and Other Discomforts

I should have saved yesterday's title for today's entry.  Ye gods.

We met up with our old friends, the Coopers, to swap out family portraits (ie canceling out the "Photographers have no photos of themselves" curse of being a photographer).  It was murderously hot, so we did them as quickly as frigging possible.  That being said, we still got some great shots out of the session (Thanks Meredith!)

Before I gave up and took my and Neeps's shirts off.  Not even kidding.

The place we met up was actually the neatest little planned community, which reminded me of nothing so much as a fusion of the military bases I grew up on with an old European city (which, technically, I guess I also grew up in).  It was a really, really well-done place, and Gentle Readers, I looked on it with Lust In My Heart.

Which has sort of been a theme, lately.

Nathan and I have said repeatedly that we made a mistake planning back-to-back vacations staying in people's much-larger-than-ours-houses.  It's been making us feel... well, discontented.  And I don't like feeling discontented.  I like feeling like I have the best little house in the world, in the best little area in the world.

But seriously I might shiv someone for an extra 1000 square feet, and the ability to let Neeps eventually play outside with a pack of neighborhood kids/run free on about five acres.

::sigh::

I comfort myself with the thought that my house will go back to feeling perfectly-sized once there's no longer Giant Baby Things (like highchairs and bouncers) everywhere.  And my neighborhood is in the middle of being revitalized, so I'm sure that more young couples with kids will be moving in soon.  And although I'd like to live on a stretch of land someday, today is not that day, because I love being able to commute by bike, and being so close to the culture/conveniences of downtown, including the airport, which we need to be close to for all the traveling that we can afford to do because we chose to buy a small house in a borderline neighborhood.

Sweet Home (No More)

It's an unmistakably Southern Evening; the deep blue air of twilight is almost too warm, heavy with the scent of honey-sweet blossoms, and cicadas are droning on in that timeless summer soundtrack.  A firefly winks at me from beneath a distant tree, a promise of the dance to come, and I laugh, delighted by his magic.  How could I have forgotten fireflies?

Moments like this, perfect moments, remind me that as much as I do not miss living in the South, I do miss certain aspects of it.  There is a deep and abiding nostalgia that will never fade- nor do I want it to.

But loving memories of a time and a place is not the same as wanting it back.  I am far happier in the corner of the world I've claimed as my own, in the life I've carved for myself from cold mists and silver rains.

(But I do wish the fireflies would visit.)